Page 4286 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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They effectively wait; they take orders, get the meals out, clean it up afterwards, and clean the kitchen up afterwards. It was fortunate that the committee had on it, in Mrs Nolan, a person with experience in the restaurant trade. She was able to tell the committee that in her experience that ratio of persons attending to meals served is about the industry standard; it is about right.
If we had left it, if we had not pursued the matter, the evidence on record would have been: this is wasteful use of labour resources - 25 people to serve 100 meals. Yet by pursuing it at the end of the day we find that - and this was agreed - it is about the ordinary ratio. I am not saying there that Mr Bissett misled, because he gave a true and correct answer at every point. But, if we had not pursued the matter, if we had not chased that particular rabbit down that burrow, the committee would have been left with a very misleading impression of the evidence.
That issue of accountability remains, in my view, the most important contribution that this Estimates Committee has made. We should note that these recommendations were unanimous and, because there were three members of the Government on that committee as opposed to Mr Moore and me, it is obvious that they have support across the floor of the chamber. And I hope that the Chief Minister will look seriously at endorsing these remarks. The remarks of the committee in relation to procedures are not and should not be taken to be partisan. They should apply equally and will apply equally to future Labor governments as to the present Alliance Government. It is getting accountability right at an early stage of this Assembly,s life that is important.
Mr Speaker, they are my general remarks in relation to the procedural matters. In relation to the substantive matters, that is, my impression of the budget - and that is effectively what we are asked to do on the Estimates Committee - I, of course, was compelled to make some additional remarks. In essence, those additional remarks were that I could not accept the Government,s view on school closures and, indeed, the information that was available to us at the time of the report was clearly right. What I said was clearly right. We said that we did not accept the projected savings on the school closures which were then confidently projected at the $3m-plus mark. Indeed, Mr Hudson's report, accepted in part by the Government, indicates that that figure was indeed wrong. Precisely what the actual figure is we will not know.
Another important point that I felt compelled to make in the dissenting report or the additional comments was in relation to the oft repeated claim by the Chief Minister that money allocated by Ms Follett, when Chief Minister, in relation to a certain new policy proposal, the domestic violence refuge, had already been spent on other things. We had heard this in answer to questions in this place and we heard this from the Chief Minister in evidence before
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